Friday Musings—23/06/23

So here we are, the inaugural edition of my newsletter! I've named it "Friday round-up" because it's where I'll be sharing some of what I've been pondering and exploring during the week.

First off, if you haven't read it already, this week's blog post is all about developing a bias towards action in order to help us overcome the fear of failure, take that precious first step and kickstart our projects.

Now onto my weekly musings 😎

Vulnerability doesn’t come after trust—it precedes it.

This reflection around vulnerability was one of the main takeaways from the monthly group session with my coach this past Monday. We usually believe that solid trust needs to be in place before we can decide to leap into the unknown and take emotional risks with someone. Growing up, we're usually discouraged from sharing our vulnerabilities and shortcomings, and to think twice (or more) before asking for help. And if you think about it, there are a lot of popular sayings that tend to encourage that attitude as well. For example, we're told not to air our dirty laundry in public. In Italian we have an almost identical phrase "I panni sporchi si lavano in famiglia", and I'm sure other languages have similar proverbs. But what if we decided to open up and be vulnerable even if we're not 100% sure about how the other person will respond? It's not about being a hot mess in public, but it's about taking a chance with those we think might be worth taking that risk for.

Recently, I made that choice with an old friend of mine. We reconnected after a long time, just as we were both going through a lot of stuff, and quickly decided to be very honest about our current challenges. That choice paid off—we established a beautiful "vulnerability loop" that quickly deepened and fortified our relationship. I have a couple of great books on this very subject lined up in my reading list, so I'll probably explore this further in a future post. For now, I'm curious to know if you've experienced the power of the vulnerability loop in your relationships or workplace (or with strangers, because that has happened to me, too!). Let me know in the comments or by replying to this email, I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts.

A gentle inversion.

How about feeling calmer and more rested in as little as 5 minutes? Enter legs up the wall, a simple yet incredibly powerful yoga pose. I stumbled upon this pose by chance, at the end of a restorative practice, and I've made it a regular part of my routine for one simple reason–it feels amazing! I'm going to share its main three benefits here. First off, as all inversion poses, it brings fresh blood flow and oxygen to the brain and upper body, as well as stimulating the flow of lymphatic fluid. Number two, it helps you relax and enter a state of rest, by helping with the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system–our rest and digest state. Finally, it helps relieve aching muscles and joints (and believe me, my muscles ache aplenty).

I like to do it in the evening to decompress and get ready to wind down, but it can be done anytime you have 5-10 mins to spare (and I do hope you're carving out at least a few minutes each day for your self-care). There are also a few variations on the pose, two of my favorite routines so far are this and this.

PS Avoid this pose if you have medical conditions such as glaucoma, hypertension, or hernia.

No problem?

This might seem totally random, but I've always been quite interested in social etiquette. I know there can be a darker side to etiquette, i.e. using it as a means of enforcing class discrimination. What I'm interested in though is etiquette as a set of social rules that help us live and coexist with others in harmony. I'd welcome your thoughts on this, but I personally feel we are all becoming less and less polite, and this doesn't make for a pleasant society (and that's putting it mildly). Anyway, to get to my main point, the YT algorithm gods recently recommended to me a video by an "etiquette expert" who was lamenting the use of "no problem" as an answer to "thank you". I found myself nodding vigorously at that.

I still remember when in 2013, shortly after moving to Dublin, I was taken a bit aback when somebody replied to my thanking them with a nonchalant "no probs". I had been taught to always use "you're welcome" or "my pleasure", so I found that response slightly disconcerting and somewhat impolite. However, I then realized it had become a common reply, along with the even more popular "no worries", so I decided to adapt and slowly started using it myself. But as that etiquette expert pointed out, this reply frames whatever favor was asked of you as a potential problem, which you graciously agreed to resolve. That's precisely why I'm an advocate for "my pleasure", because it conveys that you were happy to help and that the other person shouldn't feel like their request was a burden at all. Language is a crucial part of how we frame our interactions, so we should always try to use words that convey kindness and empathy. That's my 2 cents on the topic, let me know what you think!

Quote of the week ✍️

"The only true voyage of discovery [...] would be not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is". (Marcel Proust)

That's all from me today, enjoy your weekend and TTYS

ML